Slices of life

An ex-heroin addict and trained nurse, Geoff Brown is now a writer, editor, blogger and ABC Open 500 Words contributor who goes by the pen name GN Braun.

It was Geoff’s most memorable day on the job. It was his first day as a student nurse. He along with his fellow students, all wearing their uniforms, were visiting the Mooroopna Home for the Aged.

Within an hour of arriving they were all literally thrown in the deep end.

Geoff had to watch the loss of innocence unfold in front of him.

He wrote the story for ABC Open’s 500 Words: On the Job. It is a touching beautiful story not only about loss but also of love. You can read it here:In God's waiting room.

I met Geoff at the Bendigo Writers' Council one night when I held a workshop for online writing. After introducing the topic and going through some exercises the participants had 15 minutes to write their story. Geoff finished his in 10 minutes and spent the other five on Facebook.

For Geoff reading and writing go together and as far back as high school he has loved both.

When his school years finished he kept a diary filling it with short verses, prose, snippets of short stories and ideas. The subjects were always close to home: life, love, friendships and bullying.

He says he has “a special place for writing about life". He refers to it as "the slices of life”.

“It’s cathartic if you can find the right words to express a feeling or an idea.

It’s a release. It’s a way of getting those words out of you and onto something else," he says.

Undisciplined, he writes when the inspiration takes him. So he always has a computer or tablet near him, ready to write when the moment strikes. “There is always a Word document ready and open,” he says.

No stranger to the craft, Geoff has actually written a book, Hammered: memoir of an addict, about his years of heroin addiction. But he prefers the format of short stories especially, flash fiction. He tends to struggle with the longer form, in terms on maintaining continuity. Hammered was the exception as it had a set structure given he had lived the life. The current President of the Australian Horror Writing Association he has also written a few short horror stories published in various anthologies.

Here are Geoff’s three tips for writers:

1. Write

Writers need to write and write a lot.

2. Read

If you don’t read you don’t have the tools or the time to write. Writers need to read as much as possible and outside the genre they prefer to work in.

3. Training

Get some formal training. Go to a short course, talk to other writers and integrate into your local writing community and join a local writers group.